Toni Morrison Controls Her Characters
This illustrates that it is normal and routine for novelists to alter their state of consciousness, and then interact with their characters in the same way that people with multiple personality interact with their other personality states: as though the characters and personality states were thinking beings who have minds of their own.

In a 1993 Paris Review interview by Elissa Schappell and Claudia Brodsky Lacour, Toni Morrison describes (among many other issues) how she—like other novelists, in their own way—gets her mind into a “nonsecular space” in order to make “contact.” 

If unsure about how well she is doing during the writing of a novel, she says that she can go to her characters for their reassurance or critique. However, some characters get pushy, and some novelists let their characters take over. But Morrison stands up to them and reminds them whose book it is:

“I always get up and make a cup of coffee while it is still dark—it must be dark—and then I drink the coffee and watch the light come...This ritual comprises my preparation to enter a space I can only call nonsecular...Writers all devise ways to approach that place where they expect to make the contact, where they become the conduit, or where they engage in this mysterious process…”

INTERVIEWER: Do you have your audience in mind when you sit down to write?

“Only me. If I come to a place where I am unsure, I have the characters to go to for reassurance. By that time they are friendly enough to tell me if the rendition of their lives is authentic or not. But there are so many things only I can tell…”

INTERVIEWER: Do you ever feel like your characters are getting away from you, out of your control?

“I take control of them...They have nothing on their minds but themselves and aren’t interested in anything but themselves. So you can’t let them write your book for you. I have read books in which I know what has happened—when a novelist has been totally taken over by a character...So, you have to say, Shut up. Leave me alone. I am doing this.”

INTERVIEWER: Have you ever had to tell any of your characters to shut up?

“Pilate, I did…I had to do that, otherwise she was going to overwhelm everybody...It’s my book…”